Remember the joke ‘What’s the difference between Iceland and Ireland? One letter and six months!’ Oh how Insider wishes that had been true.
The Icelanders took to the streets and toppled their Government, dumping with it the banks and speculators that had caused the crisis through their greed and free market economics. There was no NAMA in Iceland, no bailing out of the banks and their hangers-on.
Today the icy island is experiencing economic ‘green shoots’ quite unlike the Emerald Isle.
Here the Irish people’s anger has been cleverly deflected away from the real culprits and towards instead the innocent lowly public servants. The establishment’s spin doctors are playing a blinder. Listen to the radio chat shows - workers in the private sector lambasting public sector workers. Divide and rule.
Insider was speaking to a hardworking HSE employee who is afraid to mention openly where she works lest she receive verbal abuse. However she and her colleagues are angry they are being made scapegoats and she voted for the strike at the end of the month.
So are we beginning to see signs of an Icelandic-type rebellion? Tomorrow’s protest rallies around the country might be the start of something new. But Insider remembers the PAYE demos of 30 years ago when hundreds of thousands demonstrated demanding tax reform.
Alas, the union leaders didn’t have the bottle to carry on the protests and the campaign inevitably dissipated and withered away.
Insider fears tomorrow’s protest, plus the public sector strike, will show that today’s trade union leaders also suffer from “The Grand Old Duke of York Syndrome”. They’ll march their troops up and down the country to let off a bit of steam and then they’ll retreat to Government Buildings to agree anything that won’t punish those who deserve to be punished.
Certainly the trade union campaign adverts publicising tomorrow’s protest lack any concrete demands. This does not inspire optimism that NAMA and this awful Government will be dumped.
There’s not much inspiration on the floor of the Dáil either. John O’Donoghue was pushed off one gravy train, but his scandalous expenses are nothing to the colossal debt NAMA is going to bestow on us and many future generations.
There is an urgent need for a two pronged attack on NAMA: one from the street and one in the Dáil.
O’Donoghue’s excesses have also exercised the political pundits, but this is a sideshow compared to what is happening to our natural resources. Regrettably, neither the opposition politicians nor the political columnists are saying anything about the theft of Ireland’s family silver.
The November 2005 report by the Centre for Public Inquiry into ‘The Great Corrib Gas Controversy’ should be compulsory reading for everyone. There are billions and billions of euros worth of gas off our shores and it is being given away to Shell & co. There will be absolutely no financial benefits accruing to the Irish State.
We have three highly esteemed Irish politicians to thank for this situation: Ray Burke in 1987 when he was Minister for Energy and negotiated the giveaway deal, Bertie Ahern in 1992 when he was Minister for Finance and didn’t have a personal bank account, and in 2000 Frank Fahey when he was Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources.
What puzzles Insider is the reticence of Gilmore, Kenny, and the trade union leadership on this €300 billion question. The protection of these natural resources should be a central plank of any campaign to get us out of this economic crisis. It is completely inexplicable that the loss of this huge resource is not the talk of the land.
Another natural resource that has been squandered is Ireland’s fishing rights. The Irish Fishermans’ Organisation estimates that €200 billion in fish has been taken out of our waters by European vessels since we joined the EEC/EU. And to think that out in Ros a’Mhíl there is a fish factory struggling to survive because our rights to fish in our own waters are severely restricted by Brussels.
Repatriation of our fishing rights must be a demand of any campaign. Iceland, for example, is using its fishing resources to rejuvenate its economy. Imagine McDonalds no longer in Shop Street? That burger-joint has departed Reykjavik because Icelanders turned their backs on it preferring to eat traditional delicacies of fresh fish again.
This brings Insider back to that joke about the difference between Iceland and Ireland. It was EU chief Barroso who first publicly posed this question. He answered it too: Ireland is a member of the euro, Iceland isn’t. Exactly.
Iceland’s krone has been devalued making its exports much cheaper and therefore giving an enormous boost to its economy. Two-thirds of Irish exports are with Britain and the US, both outside the euro zone. The over-valued euro is bad for Irish exports and our economy. The joke really is on us.
